Mereth Aderthad Thank Yous!

To say that Mereth Aderthad 2025 was a success is an understatement! Our hybrid event featured twelve scholarly presentations, eleven stories, two poems, and one song, accompanied by thirteen works of art (twelve 2D artworks and one glass sculpture). It was attended by a total of eighty-eight people (twenty-four in-person and sixty-four virtual) that included Elves, Mortals, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Mereth Aderthad fanzine includes an additional six stories, four poems, and two works of art (in addition to Anérea's countless "embellishments" in the design!) All of this took place over three days centered on the main seven-hour event.

This event was first imagined in April 2024, at the Tolkien at UVM Conference. Grundy and I (Dawn) were attending in-person and chatting with Quente on Discord. The topic of the SWG's twentieth birthday in July 2025 came up and the possibility of doing an in-person gathering to celebrate it. That evolved into a hybrid conference-ish event involving scholarship and fanworks and good old-fashioned nerdy fun. The SWG moderators began the first steps of planning about a year ago, in July 2024, and the logistics and promotions committees began their work in September 2024. In short, this event would not have been possible without the contributions of many, many people across the past year.

The worry with putting together a list like this is that someone will be left off. If I have forgotten someone—especially if that someone is you!—please let me know, and I will fix my oversight right away.

First, to my comoderators, Grundy, Shadow, Russandol, Elleth, Saelind, and Janeways. Not only are you all often the first line of decision-making within the group (including key decisions for this event, like choosing the venue) but you are the moral support for me in times of trouble! Our moderator channel is one of the first places I go on a rough day, and I appreciate your helping hands but also willingness to listen and care and make me laugh and yell at the sky with me.

Mereth Aderthad would not have happened without Bobby, my husband. He was the first person to greenlight our April 2024 idea since, no matter what happened, he and I would be on the hook for paying for it and pulling it off, and I thought it only fair he get a say if I decided to fritter away the household finances on hosting a conference. He coordinated with local vendors (which involved a little bit of barter and a little bit of driving out to off-grid farms) and did most of the work to set up the in-person social events, then was my on-call support on the day of the event.

I already thanked Grundy as a comoderator, but she was also the tech lead, and I'm going to thank her again. Being the tech lead means you get handed fifteen pages of "stage directions" the day before the event (I also offered a clipboard but she brought her own ... this is why she was the tech lead) and then get to spend the event acting as the go-between between the folks online and the people who are at the event itself, meaning you get to enjoy very little of the event as a participant and get to hear (and deal with) what is going wrong on both sides while trying to make things right so that both sides are happy. She also brought multiple glass artworks with her to decorate the room, gave rides to those who needed a ride, and stepped in whenever tasks needed doing throughout the day. But this is Grundy, always, as a comoderator. Thank you for all you do for us, and for this event in particular!

Shadow was the "event Discord moderator," which sounds like an easy job but was kind of the iceberg on the Mereth Aderthad staff list, with most of what Shadow actually did not at all reflected in the name of the role. Shadow monitored not just Discord but the moderator email to help people who were having trouble get into the session. They monitored the Zoom chat and were the mod who oversaw the virtual "lunch" social session on Discord. All of this despite the fact that the event started midafternoon their time, which made for a very long day—and they were presenting a paper and reading two stories! Part of their role on the virtual-only side meant attending the multiple tech tests we ran in the lead-up to the event, including (again) late in the evening on Friday.

Our setup crew on Friday made quick work of testing the tech and setting up the room so that we could start on time on Saturday: Quente, Dave, Grundy, Independence1776, Gryph, and Bobby. Quente, I really appreciated that you are one of those people who sees it needs to be done and does it! There were times I turned around and the coffee pot had magicked itself full again or something had gone from chaos to order, which is not how it is supposed to work, but you made it so!

In addition to helping with setup and logistics, Independence1776 miracled event photos from our oddly proportioned and dimly lit room. They are lovely and will be treasured as we look back on this event! Thank you too for maintaining the hotel list for the event, which made it easier to attend in-person, including if you didn't have access to a car. Grundy did the research on transportation options, again to support attendance by people who needed to get here without a car.

The Mereth Aderthad logistics committee was Anérea, Elleth, Grundy, Gryph, Independence1776, Janeways, Maglor, Quente, Shadow, and Zhie. These were the people who managed the details of the event from the large (the where and when!) to the small (the color of the photography preference dots and the layout of the nametags). They handled many, many questions and proposals from me over the past ten months with resourcefulness and creativity.

The Mereth Aderthad promotions committee was Aprilertuile, Grundy, Himring, Janeways, Saelind, and Zhie with Shadow taking the lead as the social media manager and handling the various cross-posts to different sites in such a way that each received its due at the top of the page. This team not only planned how best to promote the event (walking that fine line between "Mereth what?" and annoyingly over-present) but handled the twenty-eight interviews with presenters and creators over a five-month span. Interviewers were Shadow, Anérea, Himring, Quente, Saelind, Maglor, and Grundy, with Shadow doing a record twelve interviews!

Janeways made the beautiful banners and graphics for the event. She took the basic idea of my original and ugly banner (the idea of which was to match with the site) and made a series of beautiful Canva graphics that, as event planning unfolded, were unbelievably easy for me to edit and download without a lot of fuss, saving me a ton of time on design and editing just about every week for the past six months.

This brings us to the zine! The zine was designed by Anérea, who first offered to help put it together, then came up with the idea for and created the cover, then offered to create embellishments for the pages that didn't already have art, and ended up producing a publication that is a work of art unto itself. During the proofing process, she was quick to respond and detail-oriented in making corrections that creators noticed and, when the zine went to the printer, talked me through what I needed to ask for and then made yet another set of corrections once we had print proofs in hand and I noticed everything I managed not to see on multiple proofs previously. On top of this, Anérea was always available for input on the logistics team, worked to ensure that each presentation at the event had an artist, and helped with tech testing.

Anérea and Varda delle Stelle, in their roles as the SWG's art editor and assistant art editor, also took on a significantly higher workload in sourcing art for the presenter and creator interviews. There are probably a dozen Discord messages to them that open with me saying, "I know you have so much on your plate right now so let me know if I need to take this one," and end every time with them sourcing a lovely work of art to accompany the interview.

Then there are the Mereth Aderthad presenters: Stella, Shadow, cloudyhymns, Maglor, Zara, Savannah, Quente, Paul, Zhie, Jaz, Cindy, and polutropos. I have been to a lot of Tolkien conferences. I have never seen such a slate of consistently thoughtful, engaging, polished, and overall high-quality presentations. Every single of one of your talks was interesting and fun to watch. On top of that, for many of you, this was your first time presenting at a conference! That makes the level of quality we saw on Saturday even more impressive. (And for the first-timers: raucous laughter, cheers, and fanworks inspired by presentations are not the norm at conferences and are a testament to how enjoyable your talks were!)

Because this event specifically welcomed first-time and fan presenters who wanted to try their hand at presenting their scholarship, we decided early on that, if we were going to make that work, then we needed to support our new presenters through the process. Our series So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? was possible due to more experienced scholars who were willing to share their input, resources, and tips and tricks. Many thanks to Azh, Himring, Janeways, Zara, and Zhie, whose generosity with their materials and advice helped the next generation of Tolkien scholars gain the knowledge and confidence to take this big step.

Our fanworks creators took an unusual challenge—create a fanwork for a conference presentation—and ran with it in the most delightful way. Many of these creators also shared their work at the event: Idrils Scribe, Flora-lass (who also stepped up to read others' fanworks), chrissystriped, bunn, Shadow, cloudyhymns, Janeways, Zdenka, Azh, Maglor, and reese. The artists who created the stunning art that formed the backdrop for our event were fish, Silmalope, Varda delle Stelle, Kai Janik, Navy, bunn, Anérea, Grundy, sesame, and Tang Wen Xi. Finally, the zine creators not only contributed to our beautiful zine but went through all the editing and proofing that is part of any publication process: Idrils Scribe, Flora-lass, elennalore, fish, chrissystriped, Quente, Silmalope, bunn, Varda delle Stelle, Shadow, Kai Janik, Janeways, clovis_unleased, cloudyhymns, Zorbo_Jorks, Anérea, Azh, elfscribe, sesame, Elleth, and Independence1776. I had the delightful job of reading the fanworks as they came in, and each is a thought-provoking, carefully crafted response to the presentation it accompanied, highlighting the diverse ways that we, as a fandom, approach and engage with not just the legendarium but with each other's ideas. If you enjoyed one of the event or zine fanworks, they are all archived on the site and linked in the program, so you can let the creator know!

We also had thirty generous donors whose contributions helped to make the event possible. Because of donations, we were able to pursue publishing a print zine, ensure that each contributor receives a free copy, upgrade the Zoom account so everyone who wanted to attend virtually would be able to do so, provide breakfast and afternoon snacks for in-person attendees, and ensure that we were supporting local and ethical businesses whenever we could.

Finally, if you attended Mereth Aderthad, thank you! We put on this event for you, and your support of our presenters and creators, thoughtful questions, and positive energy were what made this event such a success. Thank you for making the SWG's twentieth birthday a memorable occasion!

Posted on 23 July 2025 (updated 23 July 2025 ) by Dawn Felagund